Littlehampton

Saturday had been on our calendar for about a month or so as the day that we would hit the beach and go to Littlehampton with the local church. The weather leading up to Saturday was not particular auspicious - apparently Mich and the kids arrived just in time for the wettest June on record here in England, and the rain continued on for the first week of July. Still, the morning sun rose up and not a cloud was in the sky, so we headed down to Littlehampton for a day at the beach.

We rode down with Mary, who reminded me of my grandmother, a very friendly, talkative lady who knew the history of our local area quite well, and knew lots of other interesting factoids. She kept us entertained the whole drive.

Upon arrival, we assisted in setting up and holding up the gazebo - the wind was quite strong, and pulled the poles out of the ground more than once. We had burgers and sausages for lunch, along with crisps, potato salad, and cole slaw. It was more like 4th of July than our 4th of July dinner. We then hit the beach and played.

Littlehampton is a mixed sand and pebble beach, with large stretches of pebbles smoothed by the incessant waves intermingled with course sand. Mary got Dalton and Maggie to help her build sandcastles. The tide was coming in, however, and it came up the beach at an amazingly fast pace. Not ten minutes after building the first sand castle about five to ten feet from the edge of the water, the sea was laying siege to it, and the castle fell to the waves shortly thereafter. Dalton kept rebuilding castles a few feet from the water and watching them get overrun. After a bit, we (and Mary) convinced him to go down the waterside for tea.

So we had tea in a little cafe by the seashore, and then went on to the local fair. The fair was a collection of rides - bumper cars, the tilt-a-whirl, a small haunted house, and the like. Maggie and Dalton got a ride and then we walked out to the pier, where we watched a couple of sailboats come in. We then walked back to the beach, where Dalton continued his futile struggles to build a sandcastle to stand against the sea, and finally, headed home.

Littlehampton was a neat place, although not nearly as warm as I am used to at beaches - I ended up wearing a long sleeve shirt (and jeans) the entire time. Still, when the wind slowed, and the smell of the salt air rose up, you could almost imagine that you were on any beach in the world.

The largest loss of the day came that evening when the computer decided to delete all the pictures we had taken that day. So, all I have is the one picture of a few shells that I was able to collect - and my sunburned neck.